This invention relates to medical gloves and, more particularly, it relates to a unique medical glove, and method for making same, that may be easily donned without the use of additional lubricants, such as, the conventional dusting powders.
For medical, surgical and other uses, it is usually necessary that rubber articles of a tightly conforming configuration, such as, gloves, finger cots and the like, be lubricated on the skin-contacting inner surface in order to facilitate donning of the articles. Presently the standard lubricant utilized for this purpose is dusting powder, e.g., cross-linked corn starch. However, certain medical authorities feel that the use of loose dusting powder during surgical procedures may be hazardous in that evidence exists that such dusting powders may cause granuloma and other postoperative complications. Therefore, attempts have been made to eliminate the necessity of using loose dusting powder while at the same time providing an inner glove surface that will aid in the donning of the glove.
Various methods have previously been proposed to provide slip finishes on rubber articles of this type. For example, the surface of a rubber glove can be halogenated with bromine or chlorine to make it slippery. This treatment, however, is very difficult to control in a manufacturing process and the rubber articles are often degraded by these strong oxidants resulting in discolored, hardened articles with a shortened use potential. Furthermore, it has been found that a medical glove surface-treated in this manner is much more difficult to don than an untreated glove dusted with a conventional powder.
It has been further proposed to provide a slip finish comprising a rubber latex blended with a resin latex. This approach also lowers the coefficient of friction of the rubber gloves but they suffer from the same deficit of performance experienced in halogenated gloves in that they cannot be donned without difficulty and certainly not as easily as a powdered glove.
In addition to the foregoing attempts to produce a "powderless glove", it has been proposed to deposit granular material on the inner, skin-contacting surface of a single-layer vinyl or silicone glove in order to reduce the frictional contact between the glove layer and the skin of the wearer and, thus, to aid in the donning of the glove.
Although this approach appears to be promising for a vinyl or silicone glove, the possibility still exists, that the granular material, which is merely deposited on the inner surface of the glove, may be easily abraded from the surface and, thus create problems similar to those experienced with loose dusting powder.